


You’d Be Amazed At The Cultural Divides That Develop After Four Million Years of War

by ckret2



Series: TFSpeedwriting Prompts [6]
Category: The Transformers (IDW Generation One), Transformers - All Media Types
Genre: (Starscream's the one in love), M/M, Misunderstandings, Unrequited Love
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-26
Updated: 2018-12-26
Packaged: 2019-09-27 15:14:53
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,282
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17164340
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ckret2/pseuds/ckret2
Summary: Wheeljack thinks Starscream is interrupting his day off to demand a tour of his current projects. Starscream thinks he’s taking Wheeljack on a date. Neither one bothers to clarify.





	You’d Be Amazed At The Cultural Divides That Develop After Four Million Years of War

**Author's Note:**

> Merry Christmas I'm crossposting all my fics from tumblr to ao3.
> 
> Prompt from [tfspeedwriting](tfspeedwriting.tumblr.com): Prompt 1: [A character outstays their welcome](https://tfspeedwriting.tumblr.com/post/178564636423/morning-here-is-first-speedwriting-post-for-this) and Prompt 5: [Write a story with two main characters and tell in two parts - from first one character’s POV and then the other](https://tfspeedwriting.tumblr.com/post/178572639779/prompt-5-write-a-story-with-two-main-characters). Writing two prompts was accidental, I swear.

Double doors slammed open with a grandly declared “So!”

Wheeljack started, dropping his wrench, and almost swore. Frag. Starscream. Wheeljack wasn’t expecting Starscream. Why would he expect Starscream to barge into his personal lab?

Okay, maybe he should have been expecting Starscream.

Yesterday Starscream had said, idly, that he ought to drop by Wheeljack’s lab soon—not the lab space he shared with several others at the capitol, but his private lab, his off-duty lab—and see what he was up to when he wasn’t working the space bridge. Wheeljack had said, sure, he probably should come by and see. He’d half meant it—he was working on things that could eventually be useful to Cybertron—but Wheeljack hadn’t thought Starscream meant it. Much less that he meant it so soon, and without warning or invitation.

Wheeljack had thought promising to come by had been more or less a politician’s promise—something he said to make one of his citizens think he gave half a slag about what was going on with him, with no intent of following up on it.

Wheeljack should have expected Starscream to mean it. Wheeljack could name a new governing law of probability after their illustrious leader. Starscream’s Law: if given the choice between doing and not doing one thing, regardless of whether or not Starscream says he’ll do it, the one he actually ends up doing is either 1) the option most surprising, or 2) the option most inconvenient, whichever value is greater. Usually both. This? Was both surprising and inconvenient. Very inconvenient.

Wheeljack set down his current project and turned to face Starscream. “Can I help you?”

“I certainly hope so! I came all the way across Iacon on the expectation that you could, after all.”

Wheeljack didn’t think he’d be getting to pick his project back up again for a while. Duty ever calls. “With what?”

“Well—” Starscream gestured down the length of the lab, with the type of overdramatic flourish he usually reserved for speeches where he was referring to the great people of Cybertron, or our friends and allies among the stars, or such things. Big, sweeping, and all-encompassing. “A tour, ideally. You said that you’d show me your lab, after all. You implied that you had some things I’d quite like to see.”

Had Wheeljack implied that? He didn’t think he’d gone anywhere near that far. One last longing look at his discarded project, and he got to his feet. “Yeah, yeah—sure. Of course.” Fine. This was an inevitability, after all. Eventually he’d be trying to show Starscream all this. Why not now?

Starscream waited for Wheeljack to cross the lab to him (the lab was an odd, long shape, with a door at the far end; the easiest thing Wheeljack could find to rent in this part of town that he could modify to meet his safety standards) with a hand on one cocked hip, the very picture of arrogant impatience. “This really is out of the way, you know,” Starscream said, as though Wheeljack had personally and deliberately made his life harder by choosing where to put his lab. “You’re practically out in the Decepticon slums. I’ve offered you lab space in Metroplex’s cephalocomplex, it’s where you do all your other work.”

“Yeah, well—thank you for the offer—but this place is for my non-governmental works,” Wheeljack said. “I don’t want politics leaking into my personal projects.” He gave Starscream a very pointed look.

“Why—” Starscream turned back to the doors, as if checking he hadn’t left them ajar to let a draft in, and then turned back to Wheeljack. “Surely you don’t think I’m going to let any politics sneak in?” He tapped the top of his head, “See, I even left my crown at home. This tour is all about you.”

“Uh-huh.” Sure it was.

So. What did Starscream want, really? Maybe it really was a tour—but if it was only a tour, then he wouldn’t have crossed the city, unannounced, without so much as a warning, much less an appointment. He’d probably wanted to catch Wheeljack off guard—that was the sort of thing Starscream did. Why? To intimidate him—to remind him that he knew where he kept his private lab and that he could and would invite himself in at any time? To try to catch him with some subversive projects laying out? (Joke was on him; Wheeljack wasn’t working on any subversive projects.)

“So.” Starscream hopped up to sit on the nearest lab table, crossing one leg over the other, like he thought he owned the place and could plant himself anywhere he liked. “What’s the first stop on this grand tour?”

Wheeljack crossed his arms. “Well, let’s start with lab safety.”

Starscream’s optics flickered in disbelief. “‘Lab safety’?” He scoffed. “Really? We’re beginning with the basics?”

“I think we should. It’s important stuff—you know, things like, 'Don’t sit your skidplate on strange tables in strange labs if you don’t know what might have been spilled on them.’”

Starscream bolted up like somebody had set off a firecracker under his seat. “Lab safety. Got it.”

The tour dragged on for an excruciating two hours. Wheeljack had thought he could’ve kept it to fifteen minutes. He could have just swept Starscream through an overview of his current major works—among other things: a small engine that didn’t do anything but spin a fan, which he was using to study some Camien designs for more efficient energon-to-electricity conversion for inanimate machines; a tiny explosion powered by Ore-1 that he was planning to set off next week that had been popping in and out of existence in one corner for the past four weeks; a prototype for a shield that could absorb laser fire and use it to charge—

“Well, originally it was going to charge another laser,” Wheeljack said, lifting the shield-generating forearm brace with the gun attached—the project he’d been working on when Starscream had barged in. “But that seemed kind of—I don’t know, eventually you just get two guys shooting back and forth at each other forever, you know?”

Starscream—who, to see the project up close, was leaning as far over Wheeljack’s lab table as he could without actually violating Wheeljack’s for-Primussake-stop-touching-all-my-tables rule—said, “What about a sword? Some kind of energy sword.”

And this was why a fifteen minute tour had taken two hours. Because Starscream would not stop asking questions and making suggestions. Every one-sentence explanation was dragged out with incessant questions for clarification into a ten-paragraph explanation, which was followed—at Starscream’s insistence—by a two-sentence-quickly-turned-five-paragraph explanation of the potential practical applications for some project, even when he had no practical applications yet, and then Starscream started throwing recommendations at him—for how he should proceed, for what tweaks he should add, for ways it could be applied—and then Wheeljack had to patiently explain that most of them wouldn’t work, and then Starscream asked why. At this point, Wheeljack had an entirely new theory for what it was Starscream wanted here, a theory that had shot quickly to the top of his list: he was trying to distract Wheeljack while something Starscream desperately wanted to keep hidden from him was going on somewhere else in the building. Wheeljack was going to be spending the next few days sniffing for any lingering signs that Rattrap had been nearby.

This was the last suggestion Wheeljack was willing to take. He was tired of this and tired of humoring Starscream. “I’m not making a sword,” Wheeljack said tersely.

“But you coul—”

“I could, but I’m not going to. The energy expended by constantly extending a sword would rapidly use up any energy absorbed by the shield. Unless the shield is taking a constant stream of shots, the sword’ll immediately splutter and die.” He was talking fast, impatiently, and at this point he didn’t care how impatient he sounded—he’d never requested suggestions in the first place. “I’m deciding what’s going into the project, and—and it’s not up for official review! It’s my project!”

Wheeljack knew he sounded petulant. But it worked; Starscream straightened up immediately. “Of course. Far be it from me to try to barge in on your little project.” (“Ha!” Wheeljack scoffed.) “I only meant—” Starscream didn’t finish the statement. What? Out of explanations? Not going to try to claim he was being helpful when they both knew full well that that wasn’t why he was here?

Because that sure as hell wasn’t why Starscream was here.

“I think that’s enough of a tour for today. The next time you want to see my lab, schedule a meeting. And I’d deeply appreciate it if it isn’t scheduled on one of my few days off.”

Starscream opened his mouth, shut it, and nodded dumbly.

“Thanks.” He looked down at his shield. Energy sword. Pfft. Stupid.

Starscream looked lost for a moment—wasn’t expecting Wheeljack to not take his pestering? even he had his limits—but then rallied, chest puffed up again. “Well. Then. I suppose I’ll see you—whenever I next visit the space bridge. Or you come to my office, whichever—”

“You don’t need me to show you where the door is.”

Starscream laughed humorlessly. “No. You don’t.”

Wheeljack didn’t look up from the shield project as Starscream walked to the other end of the lab. He heard the doors open, but not shut. “I’ll leave you to the rest of your day off, then.”

“Goodbye, Starscream.”

The doors shut.

* * *

Starscream leaned against Wheeljack’s lab doors, staring at his feet.

His spark was spinning like a top, too fast and teetering, sending static anxiety down his arms. His fingertips tapped nervously against Wheeljack’s door—quietly, quietly. He didn’t want Wheeljack to hear him and know he hadn’t left yet.

But he couldn’t bring himself to leave yet. He couldn’t move. His fuel tank was twisted up like a crumpled engex can with the bottom punched out. He regretted convincing Bumblebee to leave him the hell alone while he was visiting Wheeljack—he hadn’t expected to come out of the experience this… lost.

Collect yourself, Starscream. That’s what you do. That’s who you are—you’re collected. You don’t need Bumblebee; talking to him is only talking to yourself. So go on. Talk to yourself. Work through this.

Okay. Working through this. That… Okay. That—didn’t go well. So. What… what had he done wrong, exactly?

True, Starscream hadn’t gone on a date in… yikes. Okay. Longer than he wanted to think about. Fair. He was rusty. Rusty and—

And not very popular.

But he’d done everything right, hadn’t he? He’d informed Wheeljack of his interest in spending time with him outside of work. He’d made a point of proposing a place that Wheeljack knew better than Starscream–he’d practically handed him power over their interaction. That was as non-threatening as he could make a date offer. That was—that was laying himself down at Wheeljack’s feet. And Wheeljack had okayed it.

Starscream had showed up on a day that both he and Wheeljack had off (Starscream had had to give himself a day off just for this) and immediately made it clear that this was not a work thing. He’d shown interest in Wheeljack’s non-work projects. Abundant, detailed interest. He had flirted his spark out. He had spent the last two hours preening and posing and showing off while he asked Wheeljack about his projects. He hadn’t talked about himself once.

Wheeljack hadn’t asked him about himself, once. That should have been Starscream’s first clue that the interest wasn’t reciprocal, shouldn’t it?

But why? What had he done wrong? He’d thought the date was going great, but—

Maybe he was misreading this. Maybe this wasn’t how Autobots did dates. Or how grounders did dates. Or—or how scientists did dates?

But no. No, Starscream had—he’d said he should come over to see Wheeljack’s projects, and Wheeljack had agreed. He wouldn’t have done that—not on his private projects—if he hadn’t known Starscream was proposing a date. Why else would he have welcomed Starscream showing up in his own lab?

Right?

Which meant the problem was Starscream. Wheeljack had agreed to the date—he’d agreed to give Starscream a shot to prove himself—and… Starscream blew it. He didn’t prove himself. He’d bored Wheeljack. He wasn’t interesting enough. He wasn’t interested enough. Who knew what? It could have been any of a hundred factors.

Starscream shouldn’t have expected anything else. There was only so far he should have expected Wheeljack to be willing to be kind to him.

Hmph. It would have been nicer if Wheeljack hadn’t been so kind to him. Wouldn’t it? At least then Starscream could have sealed his armor against him from the start, the way he did with everyone else. But nooo, no, Wheeljack just had to—had to listen to Starscream, had to—respect him, to give him a chance. Had to coax Starscream into peeling up a corner of his armor and letting Wheeljack slide underneath. Where it hurt when he finally rejected Starscream.

Not that it was Wheeljack’s fault, was it. No, Starscream was the one who’d let that armor peel up. Starscream was the one who gave Wheeljack room to hurt him. Starscream was the one who’d taken the chance Wheeljack had given him, and—and failed to live up to it, somehow.

Don’t let people get close, Starscream. You know that. They’re only going to let you down. You’re only going to let them down.

He sighed in irritation at himself, pushed himself off of Wheeljack’s doors, and trudged for the exit.

**Author's Note:**

> Originally posted on [tumblr](http://ckret2.tumblr.com/post/178780598167/youd-be-amazed-at-the-cultural-divides-that).
> 
> If anybody out there has any more Starjack fics with Starscream unrequitedly pining for Wheeljack… hit me up. Need me some Screamer pain. I'm not kidding gimme some fic recs I want Starscream to _yearn_.


End file.
